Spring sunshine

Today has been a beautifully sunny day, so warm that I had to dig out the sunscreen! We made the most of it by doing some work in the front garden, including planting some more vegetables and some sunflowers. Harlan was in charge of filling the pots and seed trays with compost, and we talked about the things our seeds would need to grow - soil, water and sunshine. Our list so far includes herbs, salad leaves, courgettes, onions, carrots, cabbage, purple sprouting brocolli, beetroot and of course the potatoes we planted previously. Once all the seeds had been planted, Harlan went round the garden watering everything.


After lunch, Harlan went next door to play with the little boy who lives there. He's about 18 months older than Harlan but they play well together. I didn't expect him to stay there long as he's often a little on the clingy side, but he played firemen in their garden with the hose pipe and then on their Xbox and didn't come home until I went round to collect him!

Last night I had prepared the pieces to make a pretend fish tank, like this one I found on Pinterest last week. We used dish sponges and some craft foam to make the seaweed and fish, which we tied onto pieces of thread and attached to metal nuts to weigh them down. We didn't have any lovely smooth pebbles like the ones in the link, but we used some fish tank gravel. I'd cut out the shapes last night, as Harlan has limited patience with things like that, but he put the pieces into the jar (a sweetie jar left over from Christmas, I knew it would be useful!) and helped me add extra nuts to the pieces as they weren't heavy enough to stay weighted down with just one nut on each fish. It is now on the mantelpiece and he is very pleased with it.



Our beansprouts are still alive, some growing better than others, I will take another photo tonight.

The food dye flowers have been a mixed success - the blue dye took really well and the flowers are still in good condition. The green dye didn't take at all, and the flowers look very unhealthy and wilted. The red dye didn't take either, but the flowers do look healthier than the ones in the green dye. I read the labels on the food dyes, and the blue dye has the least ingredients by far, so I presume that has affected the experiment. At least, with the blue dye working, Harlan can see the principle of the flowers absorbing the water.